July 2003 - Palisades Toys had their first Transformers statue (Optimus Prime) on display at the 2003 Official Transformers Collectors Convention.
Optimus Prime will be available for pre-order through many online retailers and your local comic book store (via Previews) starting in August 2003, but will be released in December 2003. The second statue in this series will be Megatron, who should be released in February/March 2004. Computer renderings of the Megatron statue were also on display.
Each Transformers statue will be twelve inches tall, and will have a suggested retail price of $149.99 USD. Expect to see a new statue every other month.
A few notes about the Optimus Prime statue:
- As you can see in these images (and in the ones from the San Diego Comic-Con), the base has been changed from black and red (seen in the initial press image) to silver and red.
- The base may undergo another change before the final production begins - the cracks in the logo where Prime is stepping. That might change, and it might not.
- The windshields on Prime's chest will be different than in these images - rather than painting them to look like glass, there will be insert pieces of plexiglass to give the windshields a more realistic glass appearance.
- The final edition size for the Prime statue has not yet been decided, but it will likely be in the neighborhood of 5,000 pieces.
Click the links below these images to see larger versions:
